we won’t know how much responsibility the mom had until all of the details come to light.

But you already jumped to conclusions anyway. Nice going.

we know that she owned those guns, including the bushmaster, in one of the safest places to live on the planet.

Ah. So a person’s Constitutional right to “keep and bear arms” is dependent on the level of dangerousness of where they live. Got it.

people who knew the family reportedly said that the kid was “not okay.” even if he had been a perfectly fine kid,

You don’t seem to be okay either. Anybody watching you to make sure you don’t shoot up a school?

those guns are still hers, and as a gun owner she has some responsibility to make sure that her guns are not used to commit a crime.

Even after she’s dead? So, if the guns are locked up. And if the son kills his mom, gets the keys to unlock and retrieve the weapons it’s her fault. Awesome. Let’s put her corpse on trial, you can prosecute seeing as how you’re such a wizard of smart and everything.

I realize you too are not too bright and that combined with willingness to lie and propagandize but you really need to learn how to google. You too are simple tools.

DEADLY SCHOOL ATTACKS IN CHINA

China has witnessed a series of assaults by knife-wielding attackers on schools in recent years. Many have been blamed on personal grudges or people with psychiatric problems:

April 30, 2010: A farmer attacked and injured five kindergarten students with a hammer in Shandong province’s Weifang city before burning himself to death. The man struck a teacher who tried to block him and then used the hammer to attack the children. None of the children had life-threatening injuries.

April 29, 2010: A 47-year-old unemployed man attacked a classroom of 4-year-olds at a kindergarten in Jiangsu province, wounding 28 of them. Two teachers and a security guard were also hurt.

April 28, 2010: A man wielding a knife broke into a primary school in Leizhou city in Guangdong province in southern China and stabbed 18 students and a teacher.

April 12, 2010: Yang Jiaqin, 40, hacked to death a second grader and an elderly woman near an elementary school in Xizhen village of the southern Guangxi region. The attack came one day before Yang’s family was scheduled to send him to a hospital for psychological treatment. He had been diagnosed with a mood disorder.

March 23, 2010: Zheng Minsheng, 42, killed eight children in a knife attack at the Nanping Experimental Elementary School in south China’s Fujian province. Zheng was executed April 28.

March 2, 2009: Xu Ximei, 40, hacked two preschoolers, aged 4 and 6, to death with a kitchen knife and injured three other children and a grandmother at a primary school in Mazhan, a village in Guangdong province, and at a yard in the village. Xu was believed to be mentally disabled.

Feb. 24, 2008: Chen Wenzhen, a former student at the Leizhou No. 2 Middle School in Guangdong province, stabbed to death a boy and a girl, then killed himself. Chen had dropped out half a year earlier because he suffered from headaches and could not concentrate on his studies, state media said.

June, 2007: A man state media identified only by his surname, Su, broke into the Chiling Primary School in Longtang township in Guangdong and killed a 9-year-old boy with a kitchen knife. Three other students were seriously wounded. The attacker had been seen quarreling with the boy’s parents in the past.

May 24, 2006: Yang Xinlong hacked a neighbor to death in the village of Luoying in central China’s Henan province, then took 19 elementary school students hostage and killed one before police subdued him. Yang was hospitalized after police shot him when he refused to surrender.

Nov. 25, 2004: Yan Yiming, 21, broke into a Chinese high school dormitory and stabbed nine boys to death in Ruzhou, Henan province. Yan’s mother turned him in to police after he attempted suicide on the day following the attack. He was executed two months later.

Aug. 4, 2004: Xu Heping, 51, a part-time gatekeeper at a Beijing kindergarten killed one student and slashed 14 others and three teachers. State media said at the time Xu had a history of schizophrenia. The attack, near the compound where President Hu Jintao and other Chinese leaders live and work, prompted the government to order stepped up security at schools nationwide.

Please tell us who is responsible for glorifying those guns, and we’ll stop laughing at you.

If it is the NRA “glorifying” guns, how come there are never any of these mass shootings at gun shows?

No, my obtuse friend, the only ones “glorifying” those weapons are from your side of the aisle. Those would be the O’bamna voters in Hollywood and the music industry.

As I said on the other thread, guns have been around for at least a thousand years. But these types of events are much more recent. And they’re due not to the guns themselves, but to the moral decay on society caused by your side of the aisle.

The Aurora nutjob booby trapped his apartment with multiple gasoline bombs and the like. Face it, nutjobs will try to kill innocent people with whatever they can get their paws on. Time to lock ’em all up, it’s the only way to make us all safe.

Yes, the families failed in their responsibilities, but so did others. In Loughner’s case, his school and even the Sheriff that blamed the Tea Party was aware of his problems. In the Holmes case, the university’s psychiatrist had received obvious red flags.

The problem that you have is that you are focused on guns and that really isn’t the root cause of any of this.

Loughner, Holmes, Cho, Lanza, etc, all had access to mental health treatment. Schizophrenics often REFUSE to take medication because they believe that doctors, family, spouses, etc, are trying to poison or “mind control” them and many courts will not order commitment or forced medication because of mentally ill person’s “rights.”

Maybe, you guys should stop it with the moral equivalence and “hey, no one behaviour or lifestyle choice is any better than another” bullshyte. When you defend the right of the nuts to refuse treatment and to live amongst us, then you reap what you sow.

…and, don’t forget that most of these rampage killers are very smart and plan these things. If they are unable to get guns, they will use other means. Do any of you seriously believe that psychos like Holmes (working on his PhD), Cho (brilliant, but reserved), Lanza (honours student), etc, can’t learn to build a bomb in this day of the internet? Seriously, didn’t Harris and Kleibold set off pipe bombs at Columbine — and that was in the days before you could really learn how to build superior IEDs on the interet?

even if he decided to make explosives, he may have been caught by homeland sec. guns require by far the least amount of planning – he could well have flipped and acted without planning. without guns, how much damage can a raving lunatic cause? hit a few people with a car? slash someone with a knife? terrible as they are, i’d prefer those outcomes to 20 massacred children.

sesquipedalian on December 15, 2012 at 2:04 PM

I must have missed the forms needed for buying gas and propane. Then putting them in a car and ramming the school.

Ah. So a person’s Constitutional right to “keep and bear arms” is dependent on the level of dangerousness of where they live. Got it.

your constitutional right under the second is a matter of interpretation. in any case, the fact that she clearly didn’t need those guns for self-defense (yes, i can judge that) is an important detail.

And if the son kills his mom, gets the keys to unlock and retrieve the weapons it’s her fault. Awesome. Let’s put her corpse on trial, you can prosecute seeing as how you’re such a wizard of smart and everything.

Left Coast Right Mind on December 15, 2012 at 2:15 PM

to an extent, it could be her fault. especially if she was aware that her son had mental problems.

your constitutional right under the second is a matter of interpretation. in any case, the fact that she clearly didn’t need those guns for self-defense (yes, i can judge that) is an important detail.

sesquipedalian on December 15, 2012 at 2:23 PM

WTF?

Who the he11 are these people that think they can decide this for us?

How, is my 2nd a matter of interpretation? How, can you judge that she didn’t need whatever weapon she decided to have? You can question her ability to secire them properly and lay that blame at her feet if it’s true. But the rest, you don’t have the right to deprive me of mine.

20 children killed in one accident. we’re worse than china. it’s bad enough that we’re even comparing the US to china.

sesquipedalian on December 15, 2012 at 2:12 PM

Germany has had very strict gun laws for decades. In fact, the German laws are far stricter than existing gun control in the US, or the restrictions that are routinely discussed here. Germany has strict licencing and registration requirements. Valid licences expire after 3 years. To even get a licence, people must past background cheques that include a demonstration of characteristics such as the subjective “trustworthiness” and convince the authorities that they have an urgent necessity for a gun. Of course, Germany also has requirements against licencing alcohol or drug addicts, those with mental disorders, people with violent or aggressive tendencies, and felony convictions.

But, that didn’t stop…

2002: Erfurt, Germany, 18 were killed.

So, Germany passed even more strict gun laws to prevent school shootings, which didn’t stop…

2006: Emsdetten, Germany, 11 murdered.

So, Germany passed even more strict gun laws to prevent school shootings, which didn’t stop…

2009: Winnenden, Germany, 15 murdered.

So, Germany passed even more strict gun laws to prevent school shootings and the new laws will absolutely prevent the next school shooting….until they don’t…

How, is my 2nd a matter of interpretation? How, can you judge that she didn’t need whatever weapon she decided to have? You can question her ability to secire them properly and lay that blame at her feet if it’s true. But the rest, you don’t have the right to deprive me of mine.

My God help us from our own fellow Americans.

hawkdriver on December 15, 2012 at 2:28 PM

there’s a reason you’re not allowed to protect your home with an ac-130. it’s not up to you to decide what firepower you need for self-defense. if you think the law is not sufficient to protect you, improve it or its enforcement, but we’re not gonna let you pick any weapon you fancy. gun laws are far too permissive. nobody needs a semi-automatic rifle for self-defense, and if it’s a hobby, well, we don;t give a shit, you just have to pick another pastime. simples.

your constitutional right under the second is a matter of interpretation. in any case, the fact that she clearly didn’t need those guns for self-defense (yes, i can judge that) is an important detail.

sesquipedalian on December 15, 2012 at 2:23 PM

I suppose your constitutional right to privacy is, likewise, a matter of interpretation.

I bet that you don’t want to see the Founding Fathers quotes on that nor do you want to read either Heller or McDonald, two of the most important 2nd Amendment cases in the history of the country. BTW, both cases were, originally, started by African-Americans and did not involve the NRA so I guess that whole “the NRA = KKK” doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

By police accounts, she was sleeping when shot in the face. Self-defence requires one to be awake.

Please tell us why you deem a .22 to be “sufficient” to defend yourself against an assailant who most certainly will not use such a puny weapon?

Or in your world, do all of the bad guys only attack their victims with .22s as well?

Del Dolemonte on December 15, 2012 at 2:33 PM

because the last thing we want is for you to start killing anyone. in most cases, a well-aimed .22 will stop the attacker or gives you enough time to retreat, which should be foremost on your mind anyway if you’re attacked. leave the rest to the law and its enforcers.

Okay oh wise one, you never answered MY question: tell me who legislation would have stopped this tragedy? Tell me how if this lady only owned one .22 and her son got a hold of it, how it would have prevented this tragedy?

i just answered it. a single low-powered handgun that’s non-lethal if aimed at the body. or a limited number of rifles, if you’re a licensed hunter, kept in a safe unless you;re out hunting.

it’s a fair deal, no?

sesquipedalian on December 15, 2012 at 2:27 PM

I grew up with a guy named Fred Parsons who at age 20 was killed by a 22 shot in the gut, about 10 minutes from a hospital. I doubt gun opponents will be satisfied with any deal that leaves people armed.

there’s a reason you’re not allowed to protect your home with an ac-130. it’s not up to you to decide what firepower you need for self-defense. if you think the law is not sufficient to protect you, improve it or its enforcement, but we’re not gonna let you pick any weapon you fancy. gun laws are far too permissive. nobody needs a semi-automatic rifle for self-defense, and if it’s a hobby, well, we don;t give a shit, you just have to pick another pastime. simples.

sesquipedalian on December 15, 2012 at 2:34 PM

Who is “we”?

You don’t have the support for restrictive gun laws, sesqui, and you never will. Do you know why? It’s because people realize that guns aren’t the problem. It’s because people understand the clear language of the 2nd Amendment. It’s because people know these are incredibly rare, isolated incidents, and they all have one thing in common: extremely mentally ill people who weren’t taken seriously by their parents, friends, teachers or mental health professionals.

Columbine didn’t give us restrictive gun laws. Neither did Cho, or Lougher, or Holmes. Lanza won’t do it either, sesqui. Sorry, but you’ll have to wave the bloody shirt for another cause celebre. We’re not going to let you stand on the corpses of 20 children and use it to boost your pathetic personal crusade.

there’s a reason you’re not allowed to protect your home with an ac-130. it’s not up to you to decide what firepower you need for self-defense. if you think the law is not sufficient to protect you, improve it or its enforcement, but …

sesquipedalian on December 15, 2012 at 2:34 PM

You wouldn’t allow him any firepower for self-defence.

we’re not gonna let you pick any weapon you fancy. gun laws are far too permissive. nobody needs a semi-automatic rifle for self-defense, and if it’s a hobby, well, we don;t give a shit, you just have to pick another pastime. simples.

sesquipedalian on December 15, 2012 at 2:34 PM

“I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”

– George Mason, co-author of the Second Amendment during Virginia’s Convention to Ratify the Constitution, 1788

“A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves …”

“And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the Press, or the rights of Conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; …”

“Firearms stand next in importance to the constitution itself. They are the American people’s liberty teeth and keystone under independence … from the hour the Pilgrims landed to the present day, events, occurrences and tendencies prove that to ensure peace security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable … the very atmosphere of firearms anywhere restrains evil interference — they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good.”

– George Washington, First President of the United States

“To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.”

– Richard Henry Lee, American Statesman, 1788

“The great object is that every man be armed.” and “Everyone who is able may have a gun.”

– Patrick Henry, American Patriot

“Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?”

– Patrick Henry, American Patriot

“Those who hammer their guns into plowshares will plow for those who do not.”

– Thomas Jefferson, Third President of the United States

“The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that … it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; … “

“The best we can help for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.”

– Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers at 184-8

“One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.”

– Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1796. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson

“We established however some, although not all its [self-government] important principles . The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, (as in electing their functionaries executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves, in all judiciary cases in which any fact is involved,) or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.”

– Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824

“No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”

– Thomas Jefferson: Draft Virginia Constitution, 1776.

Gun control advocates always point to the word “militia” in the Second Amendment as proof that the Founders would support gun control laws. That contention is not supported by the historical documents. As the Founders continually acknowledged, A MILITIA IS THE WHOLE OF THE PEOPLE. In fact, in the Second MILITIA Act of 1792, ALL able-bodied, white men over the age of 18 were required to possess a gun.

i just answered it. a single low-powered handgun that’s non-lethal if aimed at the body. or a limited number of rifles, if you’re a licensed hunter, kept in a safe unless you;re out hunting.

it’s a fair deal, no?

sesquipedalian on December 15, 2012 at 2:27 PM

Sorry dimwit. If somebody is trying to kill me I have the right to apply deadly force. You live in some alternate universe. We have 200-300 million guns in this country….good luck with your goals. Again you are not real bright.